Of the quarrel at Nohant, Franchomme gave the following account:- -There was staying at that time at Nohant a gentleman who treated Madame Clesinger invariably with rudeness.  One day as Clesinger and his wife went downstairs the person in question passed without taking off his hat.  The sculptor stopped him, and said, “Bid madam a good day”; and when the gentleman or churl, as the case may be, refused, he gave him a box on the ear.  George Sand, who stood at the top of the stairs, saw it, came down, and gave in her turn Clesinger a box on the ear.  After this she turned her son-in-law together with his wife out of her house, and wrote the above-mentioned letter to Chopin.

Madame Rubio had also heard of the box on the ear which George Sand gave Clesinger.  According to this informant there were many quarrels between mother and daughter, the former objecting to the latter’s frequent visits to Chopin, and using this as a pretext to break with him.  Gutmann said to me that Chopin was fond of Solange, though not in love with her.  But now we have again got into the current of gossip, and the sooner we get out of it the better.

Before I draw my conclusions from the evidence I have collected, I must find room for some extracts from two letters, respectively written on August 9, 1847, and December 14,1847, to Charles Poncy.  The contents of these extracts will to a great extent be a mystery to the reader, a mystery to which I cannot furnish the key.  Was Solange the chief subject of George Sand’s lamentations?  Had Chopin or her brother, or both, to do with this paroxysm of despair?

After saying how she has been overwhelmed by a chain of chagrins, how her purest intentions have had a fatal issue, how her best actions have been blamed by men and punished by heaven as crimes, she proceeds:—­

And do you think I have reached the end?  No, all I have told you hitherto is nothing, and since my last letter I have exhausted all the cup of life contains of tribulation.  It is even so bitter and unprecedented that I cannot speak of it, at least I cannot write it.  Even that would give me too much pain.  I will tell you something about it when I see you...I hoped at least for the old age on which I was entering the recompense of great sacrifices, of much work, fatigue, and a whole life of devotion and abnegation.  I asked for nothing but to render happy the objects of my affection.  Well, I have been repaid with ingratitude, and evil has got the upper hand in a soul which I wished to make the sanctuary and the hearth of the beautiful and the good.  At present I struggle against myself in order not to let myself die.  I wish to accomplish my task unto the end.  May God aid me!  I believe in Him and hope!...Augustine has suffered much, but she has had great courage and a true feeling of her dignity; and her health, thank God, has not suffered.

[Footnote:  Augustine Brault